


a forest, dark and deep

by bleedcolor



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon-Typical Violence, Curses, Fairy Tale Elements, Fix-It, Lost in the Woods, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?, harry potter has the self-preservation instincts of a gnat, the author lost control somewhere around paragraph two, unusual magical situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-11-26 07:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20926409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bleedcolor/pseuds/bleedcolor
Summary: Once, many years ago (for that is when all great stories begin, many years ago; we never consider we might be in the midst of our own great story) there lived a boy.  But wait, you might say, there is nothing special about a boy living, many people do and never amount to much of anything.  You would be right, but you would also be wrong, because this story is not aboutaboy who lived, butTheBoy Who Lived, and that is all the difference.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Likelightinglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likelightinglass/gifts).

> Written for [LikeLightinGlass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likelightinglass/works)' tumblr prompt "Fairytale," this was supposed to be a quick 1k ficlet to celebrate hitting 1,000 bookmarks here on Ao3. Nearly 5 months and 16k later, here we are. Many thanks for both your patience and wonderful cheerleading ♥
> 
> Further thanks to [hippocrates460](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/works) for their awesome beta capabilities!
> 
> Part 2 is written and should be posted within a week or two, assuming the editing process does not actually kill me.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

The woods are just trees  
The trees are just wood  
No need to be afraid there  
(There's something in the glade there)  
Into the woods without delay,  
But careful not to lose the way.  
Into the woods,  
Who knows what may be lurking on the journey?  
\---_Prologue: Into The Woods, Stephen Sondheim_

Once, many years ago (for that is when all great stories begin, many years ago; we never consider we might be in the midst of our own great story) there lived a boy. But wait, you might say, there is nothing special about a boy living, many people do and never amount to much of anything. You would be right, but you would also be wrong, because this story is not about _a_ boy who lived, but _The_ Boy Who Lived, and that is all the difference.

We come to the boy’s story, not in those moments when he became the greatest hero the wizarding world has ever seen: when he Lived as a babe in his cot, cursed by the most hateful magic a wizard can wield; not the time he fought a basilisk, nor the times he came face to face with dragons (there were three and that is more than enough for any good tale, but they do not matter to this story, not really). No, we come to the boy’s story at the end of these trials, when he has quietly given up his power over death, when he stands on the cusp of manhood at the final defeat of the Dark Wizard Voldemort, and after, when he is a man full grown, though still lost in the gaze of the world around him. We come to the boy’s story at the breaking of one curse and at the beginning of another. 

To begin with the curse is nothing, that silent weight all those who are left behind feel pressing on their chest in the quiet moments they are alone. 

It starts, as all curses do, with something small: a death. But wait, you’re saying again, death is not a small thing, I have felt it to the very core of my bones, and you are right. But once more you are wrong, as well, because while death may shake _your_ foundations, the Earth itself still turns, the day comes and passes with no notice of your loss at all. To you and I and the boy, who has lost so many through his life up to this moment, death is a very large thing indeed, but to the large things, to the universe that surrounds us and the gods that do not interfere with our miseries, death is a very small affair. 

So we come to the boy’s story, in blood and dust and a falling down shack, with a desperate, guilty man dying in his arms. It truly happens before that, of course. With a prophecy in the dubious privacy of a grimy bar, or two murders on a fateful Halloween night. Or perhaps farther back still-- a different boy, aching with a ferocious need to find his place in the world. But for the boy, _our_ boy, the story starts as he watches the light fade from dark, pleading eyes.

And it is thus that the curse begins. If the boy were to look, to peer closely through the round lenses of his glasses, at the very tip of his finger he might see it: a pinprick of color. As it is, however, the years pass and the spot goes unnoticed, slowly waxing, noticed and dismissed in the flicker of an eyelash as a splinter, a freckle, a stubborn fleck of ink. It is not until the boy wakes up one morning and sees the stain swallowing up his entire fingertip that he begins to consider there might be something wrong.

At first the boy thinks he has somehow cut himself in his sleep, but there is no lingering ache, the red of his fingertip is not wet and does not rub away when he gently wipes at it with the corner of his blanket. He considers the berries he picked the day before, bursting ripe and sweet and _blue_, but their juices had tinted his lips purple for hours and perhaps his finger too; perhaps he hadn’t noticed, perhaps the color had faded to this dull red in the night. _Perhaps_. His shower, however, does not wash the blemish from his skin, in fact, the water seems to make the odd splotch shine like fresh blood.

He spends a few moments fussing over the strange new discoloration on his fingertip after it dries again and fades to the color of old wine, but it doesn’t hurt him or cause him anything other than a lingering sense of unease. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he remembers an old wives’ tale about marks like these, the terror of mothers bleeding into the flesh of their children, but his mother has been in her grave now longer than she ever lived, it cannot be her fear that has left its impression on him. The boy finally decides to put it out of his mind, in the way that people who want to live quiet lives often do; puts it out of his mind the way those of us who cannot weigh our own value often do. The curse, however, is no longer content to be ignored.

The stain spreads.

The next morning his entire finger has been swallowed up by dull red--and by the day after, two more--the color advancing quickly over his entire hand and seeping over his wrist in the days that follow. When he wakes up to find the first fingertip of his other hand has been overtaken by the blush of red he finally decides that it couldn’t hurt to get a second opinion, if only to spare himself the misery of being the color of a new bruise for the rest of his life.

The healer he visits has known him since he was a child, still fresh-faced and innocent, at least as much as he had ever been, and had known his parents before him. She delivered him into the world, screaming his displeasure for all to hear; tended his Quidditch scrapes and bruises, and those more serious injuries; and he trusts her. It doesn’t occur to him that she may not have the answers he wants until after she gives him one

“Harry,” she says, because to her he is _Harry_. She has wiped his brow and stemmed his blood, given him potions for growing bones and potions to dull the pain, just for now. To us he is _The Boy_; he is history and dust and words on a page that we will learn, for a little while. Maybe he will stay with us longer, a lesson in bravery and love, the idea of determination against insurmountable odds, but to the healer he is more, he is a child she has loved and watched grow into a man. “Harry,” she tells him, her voice grave, full of sorrow. “This is no sickness I can cure.”

The curse slows its expansion, then, as if a simple acknowledgement was all it wanted, as if the thrumming knowledge of it through the boy’s veins is its culmination, as if it isn’t waiting, waiting, waiting to bloom out and consume the whole of him. It settles on his hands, staining his palms and fingers with the ghost of old blood. When he washes his hands the red becomes wet and glistening as if he’s held his palms against an open wound. At night the boy dreams of memories that aren’t his own and a ragged whisper: _Look at me_.

It takes surprisingly little for him to set his affairs in order. 

He sends owls to those he loves, thanks them for their kindness. He packs his things into boxes in one afternoon, contemplates how little he’s leaving behind him. The boy has spent most of his life fighting to keep the things he holds most dear and has never quite acquired the habit of collecting frivolously. Instead he gathers close the things that are important: the shine of a happy smile, the warmth of a hug. He considers these, the stories of his life and memories he treasures dearest, as he packs each item away, turns a dented golden snitch in the light, rubs his fingers over the silky cloth of his father’s invisibility cloak. 

It is not unexpected that he should have regrets, and he does. The boy is still young for a wizard, though there are days when he wakes and feels older than he has any right to. There are places he has not travelled, experiences that he has not lived to enjoy. Love, for instance. What does the boy know of love? He has dear friends, those who know him better than he knows himself some days, but he shares them--with each other, with their families. There is no one the boy can claim for himself, no one he whispers his desires to in the dark. 

He has had a few brief flirtations, but they hold no candle to what he _wants_. He, who has spent so much time being the hero in a story not of his own making, wants to experience the other side. There was no one to tell the boy fairy tales when he was a child, but even so he learned them, whispered them to himself in his small, dusty cupboard for comfort. He spent countless hours imagining his rescue, imagining that somewhere in the wide world was someone intended just for him. He can’t help but regret that he will not meet them or, if he does, that it will be too late.

He sits in the quiet of late afternoon, a warm beam of sunlight pooling over him, and tries to come to terms with all of the things he has missed, all the things he _will_ miss. He wonders how long he will have to wait before the end is upon him.

The frantic rapping that wakes him from a similar reverie some days later is no surprise, nor is the stack of books that is levitated into his cottage when he opens the door or the witch that follows after, her belly swollen with child. “Harry James Potter,” she scolds even as she opens her arms for a hug, hair flyaway and haloing around her in the breeze of early morning. “What have you gotten yourself into?” The boy smiles.

“Hermione.” She is the brightest witch of her age, but she is more. Always, more than anything, she is his friend. When libraries and histories have forgotten her name they will remember that she is a kind-hearted witch, a champion for those less fortunate. They will remember how she stood beside the hero with her books and her wits and never faltered. He wraps his arms around her and lets out an ‘oof’ of surprise at the fierceness of her embrace as it envelops him.

“Ron will be along shortly, he stopped by to see what Bill has been able to dig up.” She swats his shoulder firmly before she pulls away from the hug and scowls up at him. “Why didn’t you call for us sooner?” Her gaze slides down to his unnaturally red hands where they are resting against her elbows. “Oh, Harry.”

He gives her arms a gentle squeeze and turns away, heading into the kitchen to put on a pot of tea for the two of them and Ron, when he arrives. “Madam Pomfrey said there was nothing to be done. The healer at St. Mungo’s was less consoling, asked if they could observe ‘the inevitable decline of my condition.’” He smiles wryly to himself at the memory of it and fills the kettle with quick, practiced movements. “Not much sense in interrupting your vacation for that sort of prognosis, is there?”

“Harry,” her voice, heavy with emotion, falters and breaks over his name. “You have to know we would have come for much less.”

“Yes,” he says, because his faith in them has run through the tests and trials of war and come out with the strength of diamonds on the other side. “But I would have spared you this, if I could.”

“Don’t talk as if there’s no hope whatsoever!” Her tears are crystalline in her voice and the boy dares not turn around to look for fear his own will join them. He takes a deep breath and thinks of all the things he has made peace with in the past days. He tries to ignore the fact that it is a very thin veneer of acceptance, that underneath everything burns anger at how very unfair it is.

“Isn’t there?” His voice doesn’t waver and he thanks his lucky stars for the small victory. He flicks on the hob, carefully settling the kettle over its flame. “Don’t do this to yourself, Hermione.” He smiles slightly, retakes the reins on his emotions as he turns to face her. “You’ve always been my common sense, it’s too late for you to start lying to spare either of us.”

Her expression crumples, because he is right, but she clings stubbornly to hope, that fragile thing which can buoy up even the heaviest of hearts. “You don’t _know_ that it’s incurable, I’ve hardly started researching, and Bill is an expert on curses, you know, so he would know more than Madam Pomfrey and some-- some _third-rate_ St. Mungo’s healer!”

“It will be all right, ‘Mione. You’ll learn to get on without me.” He thinks, if he had a choice in the matter, that this way might be best, after all. He does not want to be the one to survive loss again; he finds that in this small thing he is grateful, even as he is sorry for his friends’ sake.

“How can you say such a thing?” She sits heavily in a kitchen chair, quickly wipes away a tear to keep him from seeing. He wonders if she thinks it will upset him if she cries.

“Because it’s true.” The boy has learned this lesson many times, that no matter how cruel it seems, death will not keep the sun from rising in the morning. They sit in silence until the kettle releases a mournful whistle and he pours them each a cup of tea. She picks up a dusty book from the table, fingers rubbing over the edges of its cover, but does not open it. The tea grows cold in their cups.

The sun sinks lower and lower in the sky as they wait for their third, but the quiet between them is comfortable. Here and there they break the stillness with a fond memory or a dream of the future, but always they seem to return to the pressing melancholy and the boy finds himself wishing again that he could have spared them this.

Life returns to the cottage with red hair and shuffling feet, the door thrown open without even a hint of a knock. It stumbles into the small kitchen with the groan and stretch of someone who has spent hours bent over dusty books and blinks owlishly at the two of them as he notices the somber atmosphere.

“Who died, then?”

“Ronald Weasley!” Hermione’s voice rises to a near shriek at the poor joke and breaks into a choked sob at the end.

But the boy laughs. He laughs and laughs until his side aches and his breath is gone. If the witch is his common sense, this wizard is his spine, the first person he’d stood up for and who’d stood for him in return. When the years pass and we forget his name we will remember the way he held the boy up when all else seemed lost. They are his caution and his determination and the boy thinks, _perhaps_. 

There is a spring, Ron tells them, when the boy has caught his breath again, when the unrelenting buzz of the curse in his ears has been pressed back, overwhelmed by the love of his two dearest friends. A spring that’s mentioned in the dusty annals of goblin history, said to cure any ill, able to wash away even the strongest of black magics. 

“Where is it?” Hermione lumbers to her feet and begins to gather her books together, eager and impatient to get started. “If we research it tonight, we can pack and leave by mid-morning and get there by…” She pauses as she realizes neither wizard seems to be sharing her excitement. “What are we waiting for?”

“Well, the thing is,” Ron’s face is crunched into a grimace, his freckles standing out against his cheeks like flecks of blood in the late afternoon light. The boy’s pulse throbs in his ears, hope trembling against its beat: cursed, cursed, cursed. “The book didn’t say _where_ exactly.”

“What then, _exactly_, did the book say, Ronald?” Hermione’s voice goes a bit shrill again and Ron fumbles for a piece of parchment in his pocket.

“Here, this is it. My translation spell is a bit crap, you know, but Bill said I’d gotten the important bits right.” Ron unfolds the note and smooths it out on the table so they can both look at what he’s written.

__

_easte by easte_  
_goeth charm and blood_  
_into the wyzard's wylde_  
_to findeth the fount_  
_of benediction_  


“Not much for poetry, goblins.” Ron says wryly and the fear in the boy’s throat recedes again.

“This is hardly any information at all, never mind your shoddy charms work!” The complaint escapes Hermione without much sting. She’s chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully, an absent gesture that’s guided them through hundreds of scrapes. 

“Oi, you could have been the one to ask Bill, you know.” Ron’s retort is just as perfunctory as he watches his wife pick up the parchment and quietly mumble the words he’s scribbled down with obvious fondness. “There was a little more about the miracles the spring had performed, but that was the only bit that gave any clue as to where it might be. Bill reckons it’s a wizarding wood. He’s going to keep looking and he thinks he can get a meeting with a goblin historian, though I shouldn’t expect much help there, goblins being goblins.”

“A wizarding wood! There must be hundreds of those in the world, possibly more, not all of them are large enough to be registered--there are _five_ in the United Kingdom alone and goblins migrated here from Normandy in the 12th century! Didn’t Bill have _any_ more information?”

But the boy doesn’t need more information. He knows in the way that he’s known few things before. The boy _knows_, the dread certainty of it filling his lungs like a breath of air: the Forbidden Forest. He has died there once before. What a fitting place to meet his end again, he thinks.__

_ _The Forbidden Forest is not so big you say, look here on this map, and you are right. But, ah, my dear, haven't you learned your lesson by now? The forest has its borders, true, but it is a wizard's space, dark and deep. The forest exists, lives and breathes, in those eerie stillnesses where trees loom and birdsong ceases, in those gloomy undergrowths we learn quickly to be wary of, more than in any cartographer's lines or borders._ _

_ _“It’s a place to start,” the boy says, hopefully heading off any plans Hermione might already be piecing together. He knows what needs to be done, surety like lead in the pit of his stomach. “That’s more than we had. And we have a little time.” He smiles at them then, his dearest friends. “Let’s start fresh in the morning.”_ _

_ _Tomorrow, just after the sun rises, after he makes his way into the outskirts of the forest, east by east, they will be furious with him. Tomorrow they will come into the empty cottage, tomorrow they will find the letter he leaves for them on the table, but tonight he convinces them, smiles guilelessly at Hermione and plays on Ron’s worry for his pregnant wife. “You’ve just come back from a long trip and then spent who knows how long researching. We could all use a good night’s sleep before we get started.”_ _

_ _He whispers an apology to the heavy oak of the closed door, once he has ushered them to the front step and they have Apparated away, and then he prepares._ _

_ __ _

***

Dawn comes early.

The sun isn’t yet peeking over the horizon, but its glow is lightening the sky when the boy gives up on sleeping. He Apparates to an open meadow at the forest’s edge. Sleepy Hogsmeade is quiet behind him, in the stillness of early morning, and the towers of Hogwarts can just be seen peeking into the sky beyond him. Between the village and the castle, sizing one another up, stand the boy and the wood.

A breeze lifts the hair on the back of his neck, cooling the sticky sweat already gathering there, as he considers the trees sprawling out in front of him. The summer has been unusually warm and he can’t decide if he’s thankful or not. The temperature will make his hike unpleasant, no matter how many cooling charms he places on the red wool of his robes, but there will be no lingering on the edge of starvation this time, no desperate huddling together with Ron or Hermione, trying to remember what warmth feels like; he’s far better prepared for this camping trip than he was for his first. Still, there is a persistent feeling of unease that prickles in the back of his throat, metal-sour: the last time he walked willingly into the Forbidden Forest he _died_.

A sharp, sudden burst of birdsong finally spurs him into motion and he lurches forward through the tall summer grasses, the soft _wumph_ of his expandable pouch as it hits his thigh grounding his thoughts. _I’ll head for the center of the forest,_ the boy thinks, _and spiral out from there. It shouldn’t take long to find the spring, a day, maybe two._ He has a plan and determination-- if only the tapestry of fate could be unraveled with those meagre weapons. (He has a plan and determination, both of which have served him well in the past, but the course of true love never did run smooth--ah, but we’re getting ahead of the story.)

Stepping into the line of trees is rather anti-climatic, the boy finds. The weak light of dawn casts even deeper shadows under the leafy canopy of the wood, but he has never been afraid of the dark. The things that frighten him have always been less ephemeral; the boy knows that darkness cannot last.

When he takes one step, then another onto a deer track that winds its way out of sight into the penumbra beyond and no shade from the past leaps from the semi-darkness to gobble him up, he relaxes, slackens his sweaty grip on his wand. _I am going to **live**_, he thinks, and holds out the slender branch of holly and phoenix feather in his hand, loosens his magic from the tight, tense coils it has formed inside of him to instead curl gently outward in a spell. _East_, he thinks, and then speaks quietly, sure, “_Point me_.”

The morning passes with the chatter of birds and squirrels and other small fauna that call the Forest home. Branches of Bowtruckles peer curiously at him through the leaves of Wiggentrees and once or twice he catches sight of more elusive creatures, dashing away from his clumsy tramping through the underbrush. A hinkypunk crosses his path at one point and waves at him enticingly, but drifts away with the breeze when it sees that he isn’t interested in following it. There is so much life surrounding him that the boy forgets to consider death for several hours, as early morning eases into early afternoon and then into early evening with no sign at all of any spring.

He is thinking of finding a place to bed down for the night, the light is dimming between the trees and he knows he won’t accomplish anything by continuing to search in the dark except, perhaps, breaking his own neck, when he stumbles into the clearing. He recognizes it immediately, for all that he’s entered from the wrong direction. What is it that strikes a chord in the boy’s memory? It might be the well of magic that lingers in the ground here, it might simply be that one never forgets the place where one has _died_. Or perhaps it is the ghosts that seem to hover in the air here, frozen in time. Shades of the Death Eater camp, and a figure in black, pacing impatiently back and forth in the center of the open ground. 

The boy watches as the other players of this little melodrama arrive, emerging from the treeline opposite. His mother leads the way, tossing her hair back over her shoulder defiantly, his father a mere step behind her, and Sirius and Remus flanking him. The boy watches, then, as he arrives, tired, dirty, and half-starved, aware he must die and _seventeen years old_: Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. He watches the figure in black, sees the sweeping swirl of his robes as he waves his wand, hears the whining snarl of the voice. _Avada Kedavra._ He watches himself crumple to the ground in slow motion.

The boy closes his eyes, takes in a slow, hitching breath, and tries to remember that the past can’t hurt him. When he opens his eyes again the field is empty, nothing left of that day so many years ago except for a pervasive stillness. He _Lived_. So many had died, but--whatever else had happened that day--he had walked away with another chance at life. He would be damned if he gave that up because he was unsettled by a few ghosts. The boy squares his shoulders and lifts his wand. “_East_,” he says firmly, though he has no reason to recast the spell. “_Point me._”

It’s full dark when he finally finds a place that looks safe enough to bed down for the night and he leans against a tree to calm his breath. He has several scrapes and bruises from wandering through the deepening dusk, his _lumos_ spell illuminates the darkness only enough to make the shadows around him dance, rather than lighting his path. He sets up his small tent with a quick set of spells and, at the sound of a mournful howl in the distance, sets his wards with much more care. It isn’t a full moon, and the last true werewolf to roam these woods was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts as far as he knows--still, there is no reason to be careless; werewolves can migrate and there are many other dangers in the forest. When he is satisfied that he will be unbothered for the night, he casts one last spell and smiles as the elegant form of his patronus does a dancing turn in front of him.

“Go to Hermione and Ron,” he says. “Tell them I’m safe.” The stag bounds away and he watches until its glow fades entirely through the trees before he moves into the tent, eager for sleep. The day has been long, with no sign of the spring. Strangely, he’s not discouraged, but eager to start again in the morning, his conviction that he’s on the right path still burning brightly within him. He pulls off his boots and robes, tossing them aside haphazardly as he stumbles to his bed. He is asleep before his head hits the pillow.

The boy dreams that night, as everyone dreams. He holds his breath in a dim, narrow passage, invisible as evil sweeps past him. Somehow he knows that what waits for him at the end of the hallway is worse yet, but he makes his careful way into a dusty, mouldering room, makes his way to where a broken body is sprawled on the floor. He kneels in the spreading pool of blood, presses his hands to the gaping wounds just as he has done in a hundred, a thousand dreams before. "_Look at me_," echoes through him and he finds he cannot tear his eyes away from the man beneath his hands, watches countless memories dance between them, memories of them, memories of friends, of enemies, of people and faces he's never seen before, and through it all, a pervading sense of loss, the knowledge that if he lets go he will lose the most important thing he's ever had.

The boy dreams, but when he wakes he remembers nothing but a heightened sense of urgency that he allows to push him onwards, out of his tent to begin his search again. If the stain on his hands seems redder in the muted light of dawn, he does not notice.

***

The next days pass much the same as the first.

There is a little more excitement on the third day, when he passes too closely to a large nest of Acromantulas and has to spend nearly an hour hiding against a Wiggentree, its Bowtruckles shaking with excitement as they provide him with camouflage, but there is certainly no sign of any mythical spring. There's hardly any sign of water at all. He's only crossed a stream once in his travels and has found himself grateful, at least, that _aguamenti_ will keep him from going thirsty.

By the fifth morning he finds that he's already as heartily sick of this camping trip as he was the last, though he's as grimly certain that he mustn't give up as he was when he set out. He is just as sure, however, as he takes stock of the red stain that has spread overnight, nearly to his elbows in the early morning light, that he is running out of time.

By the seventh day he wonders that he hasn't yet come to the end of the forest and considers changing his course. If he hasn't yet found anything after a week of traveling east it might be time to reassess his strategy. At the very least he could see what his friends have found out about the spring. If they're still speaking with him, after he decided to go alone, that is. He hasn't had any responses to his nightly Patronus check-in and it worries him.

It is typical of the boy's luck that he stumbles across the wolf as he is in the midst of reconsidering his strategy. It might be more accurate, of course, to say that the wolf finds the boy, because the first indication he has that he is not alone is a hair-raising snarl. 

There are wolves in the woods, my dear, we know. How many times have we been told? Don't stray from the path, don't lose your way. Be wary, my child, lest the wolf gobble you up.

The boy knows these things, of course. He has heard the warnings, knows the dangers. He has tracked the phase of the moon each night, watched it dwindle down to the thinnest crescent only the night before. It is full daylight, still, but even knowing that does not stop the chill that dances down his spine. The warm, moist cloud of a werewolf’s breath on your face is not a fear that dies easily. The boy freezes in place, fingers tightening around his wand as he scans the trees around him for the source of the growls.

The origins of the noise are perhaps more of a surprise than the sound itself, when he finally spots the flash of white teeth against the gloom of the forest undergrowth. A wolf, lean and rangy, it’s black fur melting into the shadows of the trees as if it were a normal part of the scenery--which it would be, the boy reminds himself. There is nothing unusual about a wolf in the woods, particularly here where it is safe enough from Muggle hunters-- there are a surprising number of animals that find shelter and safety in wizard spaces. The thing that is perplexing, however, is the apparent reason behind the creature’s angry noises: a gin trap cutting a bloody path through the wolf’s leg, holding it fast in place.

The trap is a puzzle. The half-giant who keeps these woods, the boy knows, has checked the forest for poachers’ traps regularly and diligently over the last 60 years-- his run-ins with the Ministry and Giants during his school days aside. The boy knows first hand that there is no one with a bigger heart than Hagrid, had experienced his easy kindness with awe as a scrawny eleven year old. Hagrid was the boy’s very first friend, and he can’t imagine any reason that would cause his friend to miss a trap like this in the Forbidden Forest. Hesitantly he steps forward to get a closer look and then stills once more at the resulting snarl and snap of teeth from the wolf that sends a shiver of unease down his spine.

The animal is trapped, but the ivory flash of teeth and the spittle flecking its muzzle send images of bloody death spinning through the boy’s mind. His grip tightens reflexively on his wand once more and his breath whooshes out of him in a rush at the relief of remembering he can use magic. 

“_Immobulus_.” A sharp flick of his wand and the wolf is frozen. The immobilizing spell is less harsh on a living creature than _petrificus totalus_, but the rage and pain in the wolf’s yellow gaze as it follows his movements suggests to the boy that he will absolutely need to move a safe distance away before he releases the magic.

“Easy,” he says as he slowly kneels next to the wolf, knowing the creature is still aware of his actions, though it can do nothing to prevent them, bound up as it is by his magic. Gently, he presses his hand against heaving sides, strokes gently along thick black fur. His red fingers seem to disappear into the coarse hairs. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m not going to hurt you.” A low growl rumbles through the wolf’s chest and the boy swallows hard and moves his attention to the trap, deciding the sooner he heals and releases the creature, the better.

He winces as he gets a closer view of the hungry silver teeth biting into the animal’s leg, as he takes in the runes along the spring arms of the trap. “The Ministry.” The words hiss out from between his teeth like a curse. “I should have known.” 

The Ministry has been lobbying against free werewolves since his Hogwarts days, of course, but they’ve grown bolder in the past few years. Silver traps set for werewolves in magical forests are only _one_ of the more aggressive movements, and bad enough on their own, but the wet-behind-the-ears junior official to set these had clearly forgotten to include the spells necessary to keep non-magical creatures from running afoul of the traps. Fortunately, not being a werewolf, the trap poses no trouble for the boy to disarm.

He tucks his wand away and gently works his fingers in close to press down the springarms. Three things happen seemingly at once: the trap whines open, the magic holding the wolf immobile fails, and, with a strike like a snake, the wolf’s teeth sink into his forearm.

Before the boy can do more than draw in a pained breath, his mind dizzy with confusion, a fourth thing happens: magic recoils and expands between them, the wolf and the boy, sparking and sizzling along skin and fur in colorful eddies of light until it explodes suddenly, forcefully blasting them apart. The last thing the boy is aware of is the sensation of flying and the wood around him going abruptly dark.

***

“Wizard.” The voice is a heated, breathy growl into the boy’s ear as he slowly becomes aware of himself again. “The night comes, Wizard. It will not be safe for you here.”

He groans softly, more than a few aching pains making themselves known as the voice prods him further into wakefulness. The boy’s arm is throbbing with fiery pain and he tries to place the unusual damp warmth pressing against the shell of his ear. When he comes up with only a questioning sort of blankness he blinks his eyes open and stares up at the blurry shadow hovering above him through where his glasses sit askew on his nose.

Yellow eyes blink slowly down at him and the boy’s memory returns in a disorienting rush. “_Shite_.” The word escapes him in a long, slow breath as he and the wolf continue their staring contest. Frantically the boy tries to shift without arousing the ire of the creature looming over him, panic leaping in his throat when he realizes he can’t feel his wand in his pocket. The wolf tips his head in canine questioning and the boy freezes again, trying to breathe shallowly. For all that the creature doesn’t seem nearly as enraged as before, it is still an animal and while he has magic the boy doesn’t like his odds if the wolf decides to lunge for his throat while he’s unarmed. As soon as he thinks it, the wolf’s mouth lolls open and an icy blade of fear stabs through him.

“If you’re awake, Wizard, we should leave this place. I scared off one of the Giant’s hungry pets, but the Centaurs travel through when the moon is high and they do not care for wizards.”

The boy has lived in the wizarding world for more than half of his life and each time he witnesses something new he cannot help the bubble of wonder that floats through him. It is something inherent in those who have to unlearn their disbelief, to those who for so many years are taught to think ‘_coincidence_’ or are told to get their heads out of the clouds, to stop daydreaming. To them magic is a marvel, every time. The ones who, like the boy, have even the smallest magics taken from them when they are young--a kind word, a loving hand, a new toy, a proud smile--never cease to be amazed by the miracles that can be performed by the simplest spells. It is with this sense of awe that the boy realizes the wolf is _speaking to him_. 

The wolf, for his part, is a creature of action and instinct. In the years that he has wandered the forest he has not had much cause to wonder. Magic is not of much use to a wild wolf, nor smaller joys, like the colors of sunrise or the song of a babbling brook. The closest the wolf comes to these things is the contentment of a full belly on a moonlit night. It is no surprise, then, that in the face of the boy's wide-eyed staring he huffs with impatience. 

"Are you always so slow, Wizard? Or did your magic do you harm?"

The boy, still stunned, cannot seem to find his voice. While there are a few magical creatures that are able to speak and reason and another handful still that are rather astonishing mimics of human speech, this wolf is neither. Nor has he ever seen any spell that successfully translates mundane animal sounds into speech--there had been a brief period of time when one could walk into Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes back workroom and watch George or Ron as they worked their way through staring at a veritable menagerie of animals in an attempt to accomplish just that, both brothers certain that such a creation would be an instant bestseller, but neither had achieved any sort of breakthrough. 

Hermione had theorized that animal thought was simultaneously too complex and too basic to be accurately translated to human speech. "They're busy processing sense stimuli that are quite unlike what we experience and at the same time most animals are largely focused on survival and not much else," she had said, bemused, when Ron had tried to draw her in to help solve the problem. "Furthermore, you're making the assumption that animals _want_ to speak with us." The animals had been removed from the shop shortly after, the idea abandoned. 

The boy tries to reconcile these bewildered thoughts with the reality of the wolf leaning over him, but apparently the process takes too long as the wolf gives another distinctly canine huff and moves away, leaving the boy with the strong impression that if a wolf could roll its eyes to express displeasure this one certainly would have. He decides to press his luck as the wolf snuffles at the ground now several feet away and he slowly sits upright on the off chance his brain decides to work once it's right-side up. _Better reception_, he thinks inanely, and then groans softly as his body proves that the only difference between vertical and horizontal is that one comes with more pain.

"Bloody hell, _what hit me_?" The words tear their way out of his chest in an aching wave, proving that he can still speak, if he doesn't think about it too much.

The wolf returns to his side then, between one dizzy blink and the next as the boy straightens his glasses, a familiar length of holly held carefully between its teeth. 

“My wand!” The boy exclaims, surprise and dismay coloring his words. He has no idea of how to ask the wolf to return it, thinks if the creature decides to keep it he will be helpless to demand its return and worries, bizarrely, that the wolf will want to play fetch. It’s a strange thing to think, that he has saved his wand from Death Eaters, mended it whole from broken, and now has no idea how to negotiate its return from an animal. But as quickly as the fear rises it ebbs away, the wand dropped into his lap without ceremony-- and without even the slightest indent to show where it rested in the cup of eager teeth.

“It fell when we were forced apart.” The boy notices how guttural the wolf’s voice is and wonders at it, curious as to whether the sound is so strained and hoarse because a wolf's vocal cords were not meant to be used in such a way or if there is some other cause that he doesn't yet understand. He finds there are a lot of things he doesn't understand at the moment, when he pauses to think on it. Beginning with _talking wolves_.

"What...what happened?" The question slips out without much thought on the boy’s part as he takes stock of his body’s protests. He certainly _feels_ as if he went flying through the air without the benefit of either a broom or a cushioning charm to soften his landing, which goes hand and hand with his memory of before the world went dark, but he still doesn’t understand _why_ it happened. 

"I would have thought that a Wizard could recognize magic. Then again, so many of you blunder along it shouldn't be a surprise that you don't." The growling rasp of the wolf’s words startles him out of his thoughts.

“I _know_ what magic is.” The boy bristles at the implication that he’s an idiot, though he isn’t certain if it’s the fact that he’s been doubting his own intelligence for at least the last day or the fact that it’s a _wolf_ insulting him that raises his ire. “Of course it was magic--the question is _why_?”

The wolf tips it’s head and lifts its lip in a surprisingly good irritation of a sneer--or so the boy thinks once he quells the sharp bolt of apprehension that jolts through him at the sight of those teeth. “That isn’t the question you asked.”

He huffs in surprise, irritation melting away-- trust an animal to be so literal minded. “S’pose you’re right.”

The wolf gives him a slow blink that the boy imagines is full of smug superiority. “I usually am. And I’m certainly right about the centaurs, if we don’t leave this place. Pick up your magic stick and let us be gone.” A damp nose presses roughly against his shoulder and shoves much in the same way Ron would when chivvying him along. “Hurry, Wizard.”

Bemused, the boy picks up his wand as directed and pats himself down hurriedly in an attempt to ascertain that he’ll leave nothing behind in this grove of trees apart from his dignity. When he finds nothing amiss other than his aching head and body he climbs to his feet, staggering unsteadily for a moment before his stubbornness and equilibrium assert themselves. “Right. _East_,” the boy says, as if he hadn’t been doubting himself not so very long ago, and lifts his wand to cast his spell.

“Put your stick down,” says the wolf, glowering at him from several feet away. “If you go that way you’ll save the centaurs the trouble of finding you. This way.” 

The boy blinks as the wolf turns away, picking out an uneven path through the underbrush, and wonders at the tug in his chest that tells him to follow. His head is still throbbing dully as he considers his options, looking towards the narrow little path his wand tells him is east and then back towards the wolf and the mystery it carries away in its mouth.

Almost thoughtlessly, he looks down at his hands to remind himself why he’s here, considers the stain covering his fingertips. Through a ragged, bloody tear in his robes the boy’s gaze lands on the shiny, colorless puckering of scar tissue, a ragged arch of punctures where he knows the wolf’s teeth tore into him. _Magic,_ the boy thinks. There is no other explanation why such a wound should look like it happened months ago.

_Magic_. It is in moments like these, the knowledge of things he’s never considered just beyond his periphery, that the boy feels more than the simple wonder of magic, that he feels the connection of himself to the world around him, the answers to questions he has left unasked. In this moment he _knows_ that all he has to do is take a leap of faith and everything will turn out as it should. Two paths stretch out before him, breadcrumb trails in moonlight; all the boy needs to do is follow the right one. 

The wolf stops, barely visible against the dark backdrop of the forest now, and looks back at the boy, yellow eyes gleaming in the fading light. “Are you coming, Wizard?”

This is the moment, he knows, that will change everything. The boy hurries forward to greet his story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wolf is a mystery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I accidentally added about 3k in the editing process. You guys don't mind, right? Right?
> 
> Many thanks again to [hippocrates460](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460) for the beta.
> 
> There is some violence in this chapter, but nothing too graphic.

The wolf is a mystery. It leads the boy deeper into the forest in silence. Only when they come to a clearing that he doesn’t recognize--that’s not surprising, he hasn’t seen anything familiar in days--does the animal turn to acknowledge him again.

“We will pass the night here. Use your magic stick to make yourself comfortable, Wizard, and safe. Wild things come out when the dark is deepest.” The sun’s last rays are filtering through the trees and catch fire in the wolf’s eyes, lighting them with an eerie glow. The boy feels a shiver of apprehension curl down his spine and an uncharacteristic wave of doubt that floods through him before the wolf blinks. The moment passes, unremarkable: they are simply two creatures, crossing paths in the forest.

“It’s a wand.” The words spill out of the boy, a curiosity that he hopes will fill the silence between them before it becomes more uncomfortable. (Do wolves feel the weight of an awkward silence? The boy knows wizards certainly do.) The wolf has called his wand a “magic stick” several times and he isn’t certain if it’s because the creature doesn’t know any better or if there is some other reason behind its stubborn refusal to say the word. This, if he stopped to consider it, was probably the sort of thing that Hermione meant when she suggested that humans and animals weren’t truly meant to communicate. The wolf’s gaze pins him, apparently unamused at the correction.

_Harry Potter, debating semantics with a wolf_, the boy thinks. _Maybe I finally_ have _gone mad._ Certainly the Daily Prophet suggests it often enough on their front page, running sensationalist drivel every opportunity they have. He can just see the headlines now: _**The Boy Who Lived, Barmy! ** Cursed and Isolated! Close sources say Harry Potter has run away to live out his final days in the Forbidden Forest!_

While he distracts himself with the thought, the wolf’s stare becomes pointed enough that it seems to stab through him with all the sharpness of a blade, and he’s dragged back into the present. For a breathless moment the boy remembers the last gaze that skewered him like this, what feels like a lifetime ago. He fights the urge to squirm where he stands. Those eyes were different from the smoky amber that pins him now--black and bottomless--but the effect is surprisingly similar. If only he had any inkling as to the secrets those eyes held. 

He closes his eyes, remembering the dark gaze of his most hated professor. The boy had allowed himself to be deceived, focused on greasy hair and sallow skin, the curling lip of a sneer and the sibilant hiss of insults. A Death Eater, a spy--a hero. He certainly hadn’t had any idea about the things Snape had hidden, until it was too late. All those years, wasted. He’d spent so much time hating the man, so much time refusing to see the truth.

Regret wells up in the boy, not for the first time, but stronger than it has been in recent years. The feeling has mellowed with the passing of time but guilt and grief spill over him now, fresh and biting. The emotion swells sharply and then is washed away abruptly, lost to a wave of painful throbbing in his arm. He opens his eyes and looks down, but can see no new cause for the pain, and when he lifts his head again the moment is broken. The wolf continues to watch him, but it is no longer preternaturally still, its head tilted in a canid sort of shrug.

“That's what I said. _Magic stick_.” The wolf’s tone holds a surprising amount of humor, as if it knows part of a joke that the boy hasn’t yet caught onto. He thinks that if Hermione were here she would be cataloguing each and every difference between human perception and wolf that she could possibly ask about, but the boy just finds himself annoyed by the idea that there is some unknown joke in the air between them and he’s very likely the punchline. Still, he presses on stubbornly--he is nothing if not stubborn.

“No, not magic stick. _Wand_.”

“Not stick of magic, _Magic Stick_.” There’s obvious irritation in the words now. The boy’s brow furrows, he knows he’s still missing _something_. If he were a more paranoid wizard the boy might consider that the wolf in front of him is nothing like a wolf at all, but perhaps something entirely more ominous taken a wolf’s shape. (Hasn’t he read the stories? Doesn’t he know the dangers of wolves in disguise?) His friends, were they with him, would caution against his credulity, but there’s a certainty in his stomach that doesn’t let him question it. 

Instead, he came to the Forest alone. Instead, he argues about the creature’s word choice.

“_Wand_\--” he breaks off, frustrated, and runs a hand through his hair. “This may be the stupidest conversation I've ever had.” He mutters the sentiment, but apparently the wolf has no trouble hearing.

“From the limited intelligence you've displayed so far that can't be true.” Whatever irritation the wolf may have been harboring at the boy’s bullheadedness apparently fades, leaving its voice rich with humor again.

“Oi, for all you know I might be the brightest wizard ever to live!” He knows _that_ statement is rather an exaggeration, but the boy has no inclination to take insults lying down. He’s certainly not stupid, even if he isn’t the cleverest wizard to ever live.

“That's possible--you're a very dim lot all together. You aren't the only wizard to stray into the forest, you know. Though you're passable at least, compared to the others.” Something about the way the wolf says it, almost musingly, makes him wonder.

An animal would consider themselves superior to a human, the boy imagines, considering the many terrible things humans are capable of-- war, hatred, destruction. The trap that the wolf was caught in, only a matter of hours before. It is amazing that the animal can bear to even be in his presence, that it doesn’t simply lump him in with every wizard that came before. And there were plenty of dark wizards that had made themselves comfortable in the shadow of these trees.

“Were you...were you here when the Death Eaters made camp?” It’s reasonable enough to assume that he was. The boy has no concept of the length of a wolf’s lifespan, but seven years is not so long a time--not nearly as long as he’d prefer, with the way the memories and dreams still haunt him.

“You could say that.” The wolf sounds thoughtful now, almost as if it is recalling the memories from some distance. It settles onto its haunches in a fluid motion, bushy tail thumping against the ground. “I hadn’t made a home in the forest yet, though I saw enough of the battle. A sense of _the Evil One_ lingered, a bad scent on the breeze, for some time after. It would have been difficult to miss that, unpleasant as it was, even if I hadn't witnessed it.”

The boy hears it then, for the first time, the growled syllables that echo under the words, strangely reminiscent of parseltongue and hissing. _We’re speaking different languages_, he thinks in surprise, the realization slotting abruptly into place. _The magic can’t translate everything precisely because some things don’t have exact translations. What would a wolf know about wands? Magic, of course. It would be difficult to live in the Forbidden Forest without knowledge of magic and wizards, but it’s a different sort of understanding. Hermione was right!_

The question, then, is _why_. He's been without the ability to speak to snakes since the last time he walked in this forest, and he's never before been able to talk to canines.

"Why now?" He doesn’t mean to speak the words out loud, but the wolf’s keen hearing doesn’t allow the question to remain private.

“Do all wizards speak to themselves?” The wolf sounds amused again and the boy can’t help a soft snort, feeling weary all at once. 

“No, just the ones who have lost the plot and begin to converse with fuzzy, woodland creatures.” Though the boy is beginning to wonder if he ever had a firm grip on his sanity to begin with, considering the way his life has turned out so far.

“I am no tamed dog!” There is a hint of growl in the words, the wolf having apparently taken insult at the implication that it is anything less than vicious. As if the boy could forget, having had its teeth ripping into his arm, not so very long ago.

“No, I’m quite aware of--” He breaks off with a sound of dismay as the memory of that snapping bite sparks another. “Your leg! Is it still hurt? I can help you heal. Meant to, to begin with,” the boy splutters, appalled that he could have forgotten that the wolf needed help. He squints into the fading light of day, trying to spot the bloody wreck of the leg that had been caught in the trap, mentally cursing himself for not having realized before. The wolf had shown no sign of still being hurt as they walked, but the forest ground is so uneven that the boy knows he might not have been able to recognize limping for what it was. He lifts his wand, the _lumos_ in his mind igniting the tip of his wand with light, and stretches it out toward the wolf, trying to spot its injury.

“Peace, Wizard,” the wolf rumbles, leaning away from the glow of the spell, its ears betraying its mistrust of the boy’s magic. ”My wound was healed with yours, when your magic struck out.” The wolf pauses, as if hesitant--something else the boy wouldn’t have expected of a wild creature. “I repaid you poorly, for saving my life.”

The boy blinks in surprise, recognizing an apology when he hears it. With a sigh he lowers his wand again, pleased that he hasn’t caused the creature any lingering discomfort with his neglect. “You were frightened and in pain. I would have expected a bite, if I had expected…” He trailed off, frowning. “My magic has never failed like that before.”

The wolf shifts to its feet, suddenly, fluidly, steps in to press a warm nose against the boy’s palm. “You have blood on your hands.”

The boy sucks in a breath, the words hitting him in a way that feels physical, forcing the air from his lungs. There is no way the wolf can know what sins he has committed, how unworthy he feels to be the one left standing. The ones who deserved to live are gone and he remains, scrabbling for one final miracle, for one more chance to survive, though there are days he wonders if it’s truly living.

“Yes.” There is nothing else the boy can say, no prevaricating, no denials. He knows exactly how many people have died so that he could continue on, he wakes up with the weight of them pressing down on him every day. He doesn’t know how the wolf knows such a thing, or why it would say so, but he can do no less than admit to every life that was lost in his name.

The wolf huffs softly and nudges his palm with its nose again, warm breath spreading over the boy’s hand in a moist cloud. “You mistake me, Wizard. The magic, the stain you carry--blood and fault.” The wolf jerks back suddenly and gives a sharp burst of sneezes and then shakes itself, looking back up at the boy with what can only be described as a baleful expression. “It’s neither good, nor bad. It merely _is_. I owe you a debt. I will pay this debt, erase the stain from you, and then, perhaps...” The wolf shakes itself again.

“Er--right, then.” The boy doesn’t know what else to say to that, discomfited by the idea of the wolf owing him a debt, and puzzled by it. Surely no wild creature could be held so accountable for its instincts. It’s a mystery he tucks away to consider later, when the full expanse of his exhaustion doesn’t cloud his mind. “Do you want to sleep inside the tent? I'm sure I can transfigure a bed for you.”

“A wolf sleeps beneath the moon, Wizard. Even when she hides her face.” The creature’s amusement is back, evident in the way its ears prick forward, the way its head tilts as it looks at the boy. “Take your rest. In the morning I will help you find what you are searching for, no matter that you do not know.”

The boy’s tired mind spins in confusion, his brows furrowing as he considers what the wolf could possibly mean. “The spring? You know where it is?”

“The magic water...yes, that will do nicely.” Before he can figure out that enigmatic statement, the animal turns its back on him and slinks into the trees, disappearing in the inky darkness. 

“W-what--” The boy tries to formulate a question, tries to gather his whirling thoughts.

The wolf’s brushfire voice emerges from the shadows, though the boy can see no sign of where it might be. “I told you, Wizard, you are not the only one to stray in the forest. Rest--dawn comes early.”

There is nothing he can say to that, no rebuttal his tired mind offers up. He’s set himself on this path, following the curious creature deeper into the forest. All that is left for the boy to do now is trust that he’s made the right decision. He sets up his tent efficiently, then readies himself for bed. For the first time since entering the forest he forgets to send a patronus to his friends, but like every other night he is asleep before his head fully comes to rest against his pillow.

That night he does not dream.

***

Morning is brighter, the boy finds, when he has a companion to travel with, though the wolf is unlike any other companion he’s had before.

Dawn is still unfurling when the boy awakes to rustling and low growls outside his tent. He stumbles through the flaps, heart in his throat and wand in hand, prepared for anything-- anything, that is, other than the scene that greets him. A silvery, ethereal Jack Russell terrier is giving a play bow, the wagging of its tail shaking its whole body as it tries to engage the wolf in some sort of game. The growls that woke him are emerging from the wolf, but the boy can see now that they’re half-hearted, annoyed rather than infuriated. The wolf turns away from the terrier, but the dog is determined and follows each move its wild cousin makes, demanding attention in its wholly silent way.

His clumsy exit from the tent somehow fails to draw the attention of the animals, real and spell-cast, but the soft huff of relieved laughter that escapes him at the sight of their game does not go unnoticed. Amber and silver gazes spin around to pin him in place and the terrier abandons its playful torment of the wolf to bound up eagerly to the boy. If possible, its tail wags even harder as it plops down on the ground in front of him, but its insubstantial weight doesn’t stir the grass at all. 

The terrier’s mouth lolls open in a joyful, doggy grin and Ron’s voice emerges. “Harry--mate, we haven’t heard from you tonight. Are you--” The message breaks off for a moment and the boy can’t control his wince as he realizes his friends must be thinking the worst. “Please, Harry, let us know you’re safe.”

The patronus cocks its head as its master’s voice trails into nothingness and, with one more full-body wiggle, disperses into the cool air of pre-dawn.

“That miserable creature scared away every rabbit within a day’s travel,” the wolf growls, still obviously annoyed. 

The boy winces again, but doesn’t dwell on the wolf’s displeasure as he lifts his wand. Instead he thinks of joy, feels the warmth of it lifting his chest, racing down the length of his arm and blooming to life through where his palm cups holly. “_Expecto Patronum_.” The stag bursts from his wand in a shower of light. 

It’s a spell the boy has cast hundreds of times. Hundreds of times, he has watched the graceful twist and bound of the animal that emerges from his wand. And each time he has watched it delicately dance its way back to him when it finds there is nothing to attack. He expects nothing more than the same this time but, instead of returning to his side, the stag spots his new companion right way. The boy’s breath catches in his throat as it sweeps its head low, antlers shaking threateningly, and he wonders if a patronus charm can truly do harm to something that is not a dementor or a lethifold. 

The wolf draws back in surprise at the sight of the stag’s threat, its hackles raising as though it expects the silvery spell to rush at it. And then--_and then_\--his patronus pauses, its ears lifting in something that the boy can only assume is interest as it stretches its neck out to sniff delicately at the wolf. The wolf goes utterly still, frozen under the stag’s attentions. A moment passes and the boy waits for the fragile truce to break, for the wolf to snap forward and chase its spell-crafted prey, for the patronus to charge forward with its antlers after all. 

Instead the stag steps lightly to the wolf and nudges their muzzles together, the edges of its silvery form blurring where it presses to the wolf, lighting its black fur with a strange sort of fire. The boy watches, in bewildered awe, as the stag lays down beside the wolf, then, and settles its neck across the wolf’s shoulders, blinking placidly at him before it slowly disperses into the early morning mist.

The wolf looks odd--almost stricken, the expression far too human on a canid face. Not knowing what else to do, the boy lifts his wand again and repeats the spell. The results are much the same, though this time the stag doesn’t hesitate to curl itself around the wolf. He casts again and again, his patronus each time focusing on the wolf’s presence and ignoring him entirely, until finally the wolf grows weary of his stubbornness and snarls as he raises his wand once more.

“We’re wasting time--are you a wizard or aren’t you? Find some other way to send your message!”

The boy lowers his wand and frowns down at the creature, because the wolf is right. There are more important things to be concerned about right now--the curse bleeding its way up his arms will not wait for him much longer, but the mystery of his patronus’ actions presses on him heavily. The spell hasn’t failed him since he’d learned to cast it in his third year of school, and never had the idea that it wouldn’t do what he needed it to ever crossed his mind. The fact that it had failed now, and for the wolf? It was something that left him unsettled. Almost as unsettled as the wolf had seemed, each time he’d spoken the charm.

Once upon a different time the boy would have pressed, demanded answers. Now he nods, instead, thoughtful. Of the many things he has learned since the war, patience is the most important. The wolf has promised to guide him to the magic spring at the heart of the forest, he cannot risk irritating the creature. Better to bide his time and his questions, to ask when the time is right. With quick slashes of his wand, he summons his robes and other accoutrements, thankful that he’d decided to sleep in his shirt and trousers the night before. A scrap of parchment and quill follow a second later and the boy sets his tent to folding itself up as he carefully scrawls out a note.

_Ron and Hermione,_

_I am safe and unhurt, but having some trouble with my patronus. I won’t be able to send word every day, but don’t worry. I have a guide now. Hope to see you both soon._

_Harry_

The boy grimaces at the messy letters on the page, knowing they raise more questions than they answer. He’s lucky that his friends haven’t started out after him yet, he knows. He only hopes that luck holds out. As much as he wishes that they were here with him, his resolution that he must do this alone hasn’t lessened. Carefully he folds the letter and with one more spell--not strictly approved by the Ministry, but safe enough for this purpose--he’s ready to set out. Ron won’t be entirely pleased if the parchment lands in the middle of his breakfast, but hopefully he’ll understand the necessity.

The wolf, who had been pacing by the treeline as he wrote, perks up as it watches the boy shrug into his robes. 

“About time, Wizard.” It growls and then, before he can respond, turns and quickly makes its way into the trees. With a soft curse, the boy hurries after the wolf. 

If he had expected to continue his unhurried hike through the woods, he was sorely mistaken-- a wolf has no interest in leisure. Everything for a wolf is survival. The wolf has learned that lesson well through the passing of moons and even bound to the wizard, the wolf has no time to waste. Already hunger stirs in its belly, denied its meal by the darting dog-light spell.

The wizard will have questions, too, the wolf knows and it has no answers that will not damn them both, nor the language to make itself understood. The safest thing, then, is to take them both to the magic water. There will be answers there for both of them, if the wolf can only convince the boy to do what is necessary.

***

The spring, when they come to it, is nothing like the boy expected.

They walk through the morning, the wolf always just at the farthest edges of the boy’s line of sight, like a shadow or a dream that he’s chasing. When the trees thin out in the lengthening light of late afternoon and he realizes that he can hear the song of a brook, bubbling up over birdsong, he tries not to hope. The sight of the wolf, closer than he’s been since the morning, dipping its head to drink at a stream’s edge makes the hope rise in his chest. Is this the place? It’s hardly larger than the trickle of water he crossed several days before.

The wolf lifts its gaze as he approaches, tongue flicking out to lick clear drops of water off its muzzle. The boy kneels down beside him, suddenly realizing how hot and thirsty he is from the trek. Stones worn smooth by the water’s path click together under his knees as he cups his hands and dips them into the stream, lifting the cool water toward his face. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a dark blur lurching toward him and instead of a refreshing drink he winds up with a face full of chilled water. The boy lowers his hands away from his dripping face and meets the amber glare of the wolf.

“Was that really necessary?”

The dark head tips at his question and the boy can almost still feel the thick, soft fur against the backs of his hands. He could swear the wolf looks smug. “If you didn’t want to spend the next week ill, it was. Tell me, how have you lived so long, Wizard?”

The boy sighs and scrubs a hand over his dripping face before running his damp hands through his hair. “Sheer bloody luck,” he mutters, chagrined that he hadn’t thought to purify the water. “Suppose even magic springs have bacteria, eh?”

The wolf snorts and stands, shaking itself as though it was the one who had gotten water all over, rather than the boy. “Perhaps, but this is not a magic spring.” Somehow the boy can hear the silent ‘you twit,’ the wolf injects into its words. He blinks stupidly as the creature turns--east, the boy thinks with some amusement--and stretches its neck toward a copse of what look like young birches in the distance. “There. Beyond the trees.”

Thirst suddenly forgotten, the boy climbs to his feet and then staggers forward into a lurching run. He splashes through the stream without a thought for wet boots, jumps over fallen logs and knotted, upraised roots, ducks the grasping reach of branches. Some wild, instinctive feeling urges him faster and faster until he breaks out into the open, the bright gleam of sunlight on water blinding him for a moment as he jerks to a sudden stop.

A sharp, startled laugh escapes him as he takes in the sight in front of him, the familiar black waves gently lapping at a sandy shore. The water’s edge bends through the trees, leaving this small pool secluded in the grasp of the forest. In the far distance, past the tops of the trees where the waterline bends around on itself, he thinks he can make out the peak of the Astronomy tower. 

“The Great Lake,” he says it softly, disbelieving. How, the boy wonders, could he have missed something so obvious?

“Did you really expect something else?” He feels the wolf step up beside him, its not insubstantial weight brushing against his leg as they both survey the sprawl of lake in front of them. “Beneath the water, deep below where any human or wolf has ever reached, the magic springs there. It pooled out, brought up the lake and the forest around it. Did you never wonder why your castle was built here?”

The boy smiles slightly and shakes his head, his eyes sliding closed as he breathes in deeply, taking in the familiar, earthy scent. He’s never wondered. That Hogwarts existed was enough for him, he’s never bothered to ask why. _Maybe I should have,_ he thinks, but he realizes that if he’d had any idea he might not have ended up here at this moment. He opens his eyes and looks down at the creature by his side. The steady amber gaze of the wolf is watching him closely.

“The water won’t break the curse,” he says it quietly, without the despair he thinks should be coursing through him. He says it surely, the weight of the inexplicable knowledge pressing down on his chest.

The wolf blinks slowly at him and it’s tail gives a single, measured wag before it turns away, looking back out at the lake. “No, Wizard. The strongest magics require sacrifice.”

“Haven’t I sacrificed enough?” The words rip themselves free from the boy’s throat, anger buzzing in his chest like a hornet’s nest.

How often do we ask ourselves the same, through our small days and petty grievances--should we hold the boy’s weariness against him? His burden has always been weighty: the heaviness of a prophecy crowning his brow before he’d even learned to speak and loss, always loss, shadowing his steps. What more should he give? What more does he _have_?

“Have you?” The question is cool and even, soothing the ragged edges of the boy’s raw nerves. The taunting words that follow, however, incite his anger again. “Is it time to die, then, Wizard? Life has nothing more to offer you?” The wolf knows, better than most, that life is not about fairness. “Is there nothing more that you _owe_, Wizard?”

The boy closes his eyes against that growl and shudders, feeling the thrum and buzz of magic that surrounds them. Behind his eyelids, a memory unfolds. Dust and eyes black as night, streams of starlight-silver memories and warm, wet blood slicking his palms. He’s given much, but not as much as some. 

“I’m so _tired_,” the boy whispers.

“I know,” says the wolf, not unkindly. 

He takes a deep, slow breath. “My name is Harry Potter,” the boy says it firmly, unsure if he’s reminding himself of who he is or telling the wolf. When he opens his eyes once more he feels steadier, centered. He looks at his companion and finds the wolf looking back at him, watching, waiting. 

“What do we have to do?”

***

If the boy had stopped to think about it, he would have expected the wolf to be a demanding taskmaster. What but the callousness of nature had taught the wolf? Why shouldn’t it, then, be just as exacting in its direction? Instead he receives one set of puzzling instructions after another from the wolf, none of it with any guidance further than, “The magic will lead you.”

The first day the boy gathers hundreds of slender, green branches of rowan--to conduct the magic, the wolf says, but will reveal nothing further when pressed. When he has enough he is sent out to fetch raven’s feathers, the longer the better, and then for pale yellow-green vines he finds twisting in the undergrowth at the base of a bowtruckle’s nest. He is sent out to forage until he has quite the peculiar collection, growing more and more puzzling by the hour. So the days pass, the boy hunting for oddities, guided to troves of strange treasure by his canine companion when he cannot find them on his own.

Their nights, however, are something else entirely. The first evening by the lake the boy realizes that his tent has been accidentally abandoned in his hurry to join the wolf, and so the two spend their dreaming hours together beneath the stars, a conjured quilt as their mattress. If the wolf resents being made into a blanket, the boy’s fingers twined into thick fur as he sleeps, it never mentions. Instead they while away the twilight, those stretched out, elastic moments between sleep and waking, with talking. 

The boy doesn’t realize how much he has come to trust the wolf right away; the awareness comes in starts and stops. He builds a crackling fire that first night and they quietly settle in, each acclimating to the presence of the other. The boy watches the trail of embers floating into the darkness as he picks at his food, trying not to let the quiet weigh on him. Shadows from the fire’s light give his stained arms an almost ghoulish appearance and his thoughts flit from one worry to the next. It isn’t until the fire burns low that he notices the wolf’s gaze fixed on his meagre dinner, a spicy sausage and a wedge of cheese folded into a thick slice of bread. His appetite, flourishing in the past several days from exercise and fresh air, has dwindled to nothing.

Without a word, the boy offers the food out to his companion, remembering the wolf’s complaints of missing out in the morning. The creature startles at the motion and draws back with a soft, disgruntled growl.

“I am no pet, Wizard. I don’t need you to feed me.”

The boy wonders at how prideful the wolf is, a conceit he would have considered human before this moment. “No, you’re not. But it will go to waste otherwise, and I thought you might want it,” he hesitates before adding. “It was sort of my fault that you missed your breakfast, after all.”

The wolf edges closer, as though it’s tempted, but still refuses the fare. “That’s true enough,” the creature grumbles. “But I can hunt again in the morning. If you grow ill from lack of food you’ll never leave the forest.”

“I’m not hungry,” the boy says coaxingly, stretching his hand out just a bit closer to the wolf. “Besides, if I change my mind I have plenty more in my supplies.”

The wolf hesitates a moment longer, regarding him with a wary gaze. “If you’re certain…” Before he can do more than nod the creature darts in and snatches the food from his hand with an unexpected speed and delicacy. The boy watches it all disappear in quick, efficient bites, a pink tongue darting out to clean any stray crumbs from the wolf’s inky black muzzle.

“My thanks, Wizard.” The boy ducks his head to hide his smile at the grudging gratefulness in the wolf’s words, having a sneaking suspicion that the wolf would take his amusement the wrong way. The anxiety that has plagued him for the last several hours loosens its grip on his chest.

“You’re welcome,” he says, his voice soft. “Although I should be the one thanking you. I’d still be stumbling around in the woods if not for you.”

“Perhaps,” growls the wolf. “But I would be dead if not for you, Wizard. Perhaps we needed each other.”

The boy smiles again, this time sharing the expression with his companion, strangely pleased at the thought. “You might be right.”

The wolf snorts softly, the slow back and forth swish of its tail belying the creature’s amusement. “I usually am.”

The days pass quickly, lost in the frenzy of their strange scavenger hunt, but each night the boy finds small pleasures in the wolf’s company. There is something about the creature, the way it grumbles and growls, but eventually accedes to any of the boy’s requests, the odd, forthright outlook it has, the brusque manner in which it shares its observations… all of it is strangely familiar, soothing when he doesn’t even realize he needs to be soothed. 

The boy finds himself sharing thoughts with the wolf that he hasn’t shared with anyone before, things he’s hardly dared to think.

“Do wolves make wishes?” He asks it one night when the fire has burned down and the expanse of stars in the sky above them makes his breath catch in his throat. Even in his secluded little cottage the night sky has never seemed so close. The wolf is a soft, warm wall against his side.

“Wishes?” The boy can’t tell if the wolf is more surprised or confused by the concept of wishes.

“Something you want, more than anything you’ve ever wanted…” He sighs softly. “Something you can’t have.”

“What good does it do to desire what you can’t have?” He feels the wolf’s sides heave in a snort of apparent disgust.

“No good at all,” the boy says wistfully. “But still, I wish…”

“You defeated _The Evil One_. You are revered among your people. Even the creatures of the forest know your name, Wizard. You are a beloved hero, but you wish for _more_?” The wolf sounds annoyed now, disbelieving that he could want something different from life and the boy can’t help the bitter laugh that escapes him.

“I wish for _less_!” He groans and sits up, scrubbing a hand through wild hair. “Everything with Voldemort-- it wasn’t _me_ it was… dumb luck. A series of fortunate mistakes,” the boy sighs. “The story of my whole life. There was a man…”

“Another wizard?” He hears the wolf moving behind him, then feels the solid weight of the creature against his back, curious despite itself.

“Yes, another wizard.” The boy leans into his companion, his eyes slipping closed. “Spiteful, cruel, sarcastic… he hated everything about me.”

“It sounds as if you’re well rid of him.”

He jerks away from the wolf at that, growling in frustration. It’s a sentiment he’s heard before and it never fails to anger him. “We would all be ground beneath Voldemort’s thumb even now, if not for him!” The boy turns to glower at the wolf through the dying light of the fire. “He hated me, but what did I ever do to prove that I wasn’t exactly what he thought of me? And he still-- he gave _everything_! He had nothing and no love for me and _still_...”

“Not even a wolf does something for nothing, Wizard,” the wolf’s words are calm and the boy shivers as the creature settles close against him once more. “If it is as you say, there was something he felt worth his suffering.”

“It was the right thing and he did it,” he says softly, hiding his face against musky fur and breathing in the warmth. “He’s the reason we won the war. He’s the reason I’m alive today... and I never got to thank him.”

“And this is your wish?”

The boy sighs, weary, because it’s more complex than that, more impossible, more _selfish_. “In part.”

“Only part?” The wolf’s breath ruffles his hair and he can’t help the way the sensation curls his lips, lightens the weight on his chest.

“He hated me, you know.” Absently the boy reaches up and cards his fingers through the thick strands of the wolf’s coat. “Is it strange to miss that? Is it strange to want someone who knows the very worst of you? I wasn’t ‘Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived’ to him. I was just Harry, however distasteful that might have been. Human. Fallible.”

“What of your friends, Wizard? The ones who worry after you.” 

The boy simply shakes his head, not certain how to explain that as dear as his friends are… there is still something missing.

***

Several nights later he boy is surprised to look up and find the moon glowing full and heavy above them. He can’t believe that so much time has passed already, that he’s spent weeks in the woods. Yet somehow it feels like longer; it feels like an eternity, like he’s stumbled somehow into the realm of the fair folk and when he finally leaves he’ll find that a hundred years have passed. He doesn’t think about what else the moon heralds, really, until the chorus of howls emerges from the trees surrounding them and the wolf at his side goes tense. The boy’s hand goes to his wand, his heart galloping in his chest. _Werewolves_.

“Peace, Wizard.” The wolf’s voice is low and steady, though the tension still running through its body belies its calm. “This place is protected, those touched by evil cannot enter.”

The boy gives a bewildered laugh and raises his hands, still stained the red of blood despite his efforts so far, to show his companion. “I think you might be mistaken, Wolf.” 

The wolf snorts and nudges one of the boy’s palms with his muzzle. “There is no evil allowed here, Wizard. It has always been so.”

The boy frowns, confused, and thoughtfully rubs the tips of his fingers together, half-expecting to feel the slick stickiness of blood between them. “How have I been cursed, then, if not with evil?”

“Old magic. Powerful magic.” The wolf pauses then, pressing close to the boy’s hands again, and does something it has never done before--it licks delicately at the boy’s fingertips. The warm, wet tongue slides over his skin and leaves behind strange, sparking discomfort. “Frightened magic. I told you, didn’t I? It’s not good or bad, it merely _is._”

Confused, the boy looks down at his fingers in the silvery glow of the moonlight, trying to both work out the feeling left lingering behind by the wolf’s tongue and the meaning of its words. “Werewolves aren’t evil, most of them had no choice in what they are.”

“The darkwolf is a twisted thing. Its form is a creation of the blackest magics and it taints the wizard that carries the curse, no matter what they are outside of the moon.” The wolf sounds almost sorrowful. “A truth, though an unfortunate one.” 

They listen to the howls get closer, then retreat into the distance. The boy can feel the wolf grow tense beneath its fur. “Can you understand them?”

The wolf gives an odd sound that the boy hasn’t heard before, caught somewhere between a growl and a groan, a strange thing that seems to convey annoyance. “Yes. He sings to the moon.”

“That sounds beautiful.” The moon is lovely, a shining disc of white light in the sky, and the boy can understand the lure of wanting to sing to it. At least until the wolf speaks again.

“He may sing to the moon, but his song asks for your blood.” The words send a chill through the boy and the wolf shifts. For the first time it curls its body protectively around the boy, instead of merely appearing to tolerate the way he usually wraps himself close. “I will keep watch, Wizard. Take your rest. Tomorrow you must start the simulacrum.”

The words have a weighty effect on the boy, leaving him warm and drowsy as he finds himself wrapped around another living creature. Before he can so much as ask just what a ‘simulacrum’ is, he drifts into sleep.

***

A simulacrum, as it turns out, is a strange sort of scarecrow that the boy is expected to build from the odds and ends the wolf has had him gathering throughout the past days. Again he is meant to let himself be led by magic, but he finds the advice less helpful now than he had in the time spent foraging and the days spin themselves out in a blur. Building a body from the bits and bobs one finds on the forest floor requires quite a bit of trial and error, at least when one is as inexperienced at crafting as the boy is. It might have gone a bit quicker, had he not been forbidden the use of his magic, but eventually, early one evening, he finds himself looking down at his creation with the knowledge that it’s finished.

Sitting back, the boy surveys the simulacrum, its rickety body woven together with the green branches of rowan, here and there the pale yellow vines he collected reinforce the places where the rowan would not cooperate--the simulacrum’s throat, its left forearm--all in a jagged line that looks somehow right, if not particularly _good_. Black feathers, arranged carefully to resemble hair, sprout from its head and its eyes are two glinting chips of black rock he found in the streambed after days of searching. There is something about it that seems familiar, though the boy cannot quite put his finger on what it is.

“The new moon is tonight. Your timing is good,” the sudden emergence of the wolf’s voice startles the boy in a way that it hasn’t since the first days of their acquaintance. The wolf is sitting placidly by his side when he turns to look and the boy wonders just how he missed its arrival.

“I can’t believe it’s finally finished,” the boy says wryly, glancing back to simulacrum. 

“Not quite,” the wolf says, its voice low. “It’s still missing something.”

He looks back to the wolf, puzzled. “I’ve used everything you made me gather. There isn’t anything left to add.”

“One thing,” says the wolf, lifting its gaze to meet the boy’s. “A heart.”

“A heart?” The boy is confused and then _not_ with a sudden, dreadful clarity. “_No_.”

“Yes,” the wolf says simply. “A heart.”

“No.” He shakes his head and scrambles to his feet. “No, I won’t do it.”

“You would let yourself die, then? I owe you a debt, Wizard. The magic binds me to you.” There is a snarl in wolf’s voice, a hard edge of anger as the boy retreats from him.

“So you want me to kill you?!” Anguish fills him at saying the words out loud and the boy stops moving away to press the heels of his hands hard against the burning in his eyes, shaking his head wildly in denial.

“No, Wizard.” The wolf’s voice is suddenly, painfully kind. “I wish for you to release me.”

“I won’t. I _can’t_. You’re my _friend_.” The words are sobbed out beyond the boy’s control and he stumbles and sinks slowly back down to the ground. He has lost much, more than he thought it possible to bear, but the idea of such a loss at his own hands is agonizing.

The wolf pauses then, as if digesting that information, and sighs. Its tail gives one slow, measured wag. “I might have said, once, that wolves do not have friends. I am…pleased to have been wrong.”

“Don’t ask this of me, _please_,” the boy begs, scrubbing hard at his eyes.

“I wouldn’t, if there were any other choice.” The wolf crosses the distance between them slowly, its voice soft and sympathetic.

“There must be something, _anything_.” The words rush out of him in desperation because even as he argues he feels his conviction wavering in the face of the wolf’s calm certainty.

“I told you that the magic requires sacrifice. I have not lied to you, Wizard. I will not start now.”

“I _can’t_.” He howls out the denial, feeling suddenly as if he knows exactly the madness of a full moon boiling through his blood.

“You _must_.” The wolf snarls it, the sharpness of it cutting through the boy’s wild cry.

The boy feels his breath catch in his throat at that snarl, a hard knot that he can’t force free again until the wolf’s head nudges hard against his shoulder and it’s forced out in a ragged sob.

“_Why?_ Why does it have to be you?”

“Wiz--_Harry_.” The wolf’s voice is gentle again and another stuttered hiccup of breath jerks out of the boy’s chest. How many times has he wished to be just Harry? What he wouldn’t give to be anyone else in this moment. “This is the only way. It will free us both. Would you keep me in your debt? Are you so cruel, Wizard?”

“No!” He shouts it, misery flooding through him. “I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t have you indebted to me.” _If anyone is cruel,_ the boy thinks, _it is you_. The price--surely the price is too much.

“What would you have from me, then? What can I give you to convince you that it is necessary, to save both of us?” It is the wolf’s voice that is pleading now and the boy shudders to hear it, shaking his head fiercely.

“I don’t want anything, just...just my friend.” The boy’s voice breaks and a wash of fresh tears slide down his cheeks, despite the hand swiping at them furiously.

“Even if it destroys us both?” The wolf asks quietly. “Do you value friendship so poorly?”

He shakes his head furiously, opening his mouth to deny it, to deny all of it, but nothing but another ragged, breathless sob escapes him.

“Harry,” the wolf’s muzzle presses against his cheek and licks away the salty trail of a tear. “You have trusted me until now. Once more is all I ask. The simulacrum must have a heart.”

The boy gives a choked wail and throws his arms around the wolf, burying his face in the thick ruff of fur at the creature’s throat. He opens his mouth to refuse again, but still the words won’t come out. _The simulacrum must have a heart._

***

The boy and the wolf sit together until the sun sinks fully beneath the horizon. He strokes his fingers through the wolf’s coat, trying to memorize the way it feels against his cheek, beneath his fingers. Only a few short days before the wolf would not have tolerated such a thing. How well the boy remembers the way the wolf had snarled at being thought tame. He thinks, perhaps, that they have inadvertently tamed one another anyway, these few short weeks in the forest with none but the other for company. He does not think of the task waiting for him, sick to the very core at the knowledge of what he has agreed to do.

Finally, however, it seems they can put the deed off no longer and the wolf pulls away from the boy’s embrace. “Trust me,” the wolf says again, firmly, and then guides him carefully back to the simulacrum’s resting place. 

“You must follow my instructions exactly, Wizard,” the wolf growls as they face one another. “When this body is expired you will place my heart in the simulacrum and wrap my pelt around it. Bury the rest and lay the pelt and simulacrum over the grave.”

The boy shudders and gives a jerking nod, unable to either refuse or put his horror into words.

“When you are finished, both the grave and the simulacrum must remain undisturbed for three days,” here the wolf hesitates before continuing more gently. “If you follow my instructions as you should, the curse will be removed. My sacrifice is freely given, Harry.”

“It’s not worth it.” The boy’s voice is a choked whisper. “_I’m_ not worth it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” the wolf snaps, hackles rising. The creature deflates abruptly, ears laying back as it steps in to give the boy one last gentle nuzzle. “I believe it’s worth it. Trust, Wizard.”

The wolf dips its head and begins to lick then, carefully sliding its tongue over the bloody stain of the boy’s arms, each swipe leaving behind pale skin in its wake. The creature takes its time, making sure there is no hint of color that remains behind on either arm, in any joint or crease of elbows, wrists, or fingers. The boy trembles under the onslaught, the strange almost electric jolts he’d felt under the full moon returning almost tenfold now, leaving him wincing uncomfortably. The pain is more bearable, though, than the knowledge of what comes next, when the wolf finally steps away.

The boy lifts his wand in a shaking hand. He hesitates, looks away from the wolf. 

“Look at me.” A wild sob escapes the boy at those words, at the memory they echo, and he is helpless to disobey. He looks toward the wolf, nearly invisible in the moonless dark, just able to make out a silhouette of black. “Harry… please.” 

With a another sob the boy squeezes his eyes shut and gives a slash of his arm, releasing the spell nonverbally. He tries not to hear the soft thud of the wolf’s body hitting the forest floor. He takes in one shuddering, sobbing breath, then another. He forces his eyes open, the wolf’s voice echoing in his ears. _The simulacrum must have a heart._

***

He doesn’t vomit as he carries out each step of the wolf’s instructions, though several times it’s a near thing. Instead he weeps over his friend’s lifeless body until his eyes burn and his breath chokes him. Almost blindly he works through the night, grateful for the cover of darkness until his lack of sight sickeningly enhances his other senses and still he soldiers on. He lays the fur-wrapped bundle of heart and feathers and sticks over the grave just as the sun starts to peek over the horizon in the east.

For a moment he wants to collapse onto the simulacrum, to mourn for the wolf he’d opened his heart to, to pretend that the thick fur still holds his friend and cry into it for his loss. The wolf’s warning rings through him, even as his arms tremble with the desire to collapse. He falls to the side instead, curls into the damp morning soil and sobs there, continuing to spill his tears into the earth until he slips into an uneasy sleep.

When the boy wakes several hours later his tears have passed, but grief claws at his chest, a living, violent thing. How many times has he found himself in just this place, blood on his hands, a body cold in a grave? He holds his hands up toward the sky, clean and bare in the midmorning light. There is no red stain anywhere he can see, no proof of the atrocities he has committed in the night lingering anywhere there, only a smudge of dirt where his palm has been pressed to the earth as he slept. 

For a long, anguished moment the boy wishes he could have it back. Anger curls his fingers into fists, short nails digging into his palms, and he tips his head back to let go of a sharp shout of rage. A flock of birds takes wing out of the treeline and something lightens in him at the sight, curling hopefully in his chest. He remembers the wolf’s soft words: _Trust me_. And so he waits.

Three days pass intolerably slowly, the boy lingering by the wolf’s grave. The magic of the spring keeps evil from entering their camp, but he has to scare away a handful of small scavengers drawn in by the scent of blood and death. The second morning a doe and her fawn enter the clearing to drink from the spring, veering wide from where he sits by the grave. He watches in silence until they leave again, trying to find some joy in him at the sight. 

Life goes on, you see. The tenderest of hearts will wilt and fade when so stricken, but the boy was born with the heart of a lion. A blessing? Perhaps another curse. How many times can a wound be reopened before it never closes? He teeters now, on the precipice of loss, not knowing what path will lead him clear. The world spins on, unaffected by pain or despair, uncaring that a boy in the woods is lost. 

To pass the time he whispers to the wolf, shares new wishes and old memories, imagining the things the wolf would have said in return. A wild creature is a strange sort of friend, but for all its grumpy posturing, for all its blunt and no-nonsense manner, the wolf had shown the boy nothing but kindness in the days they spent together.

As light brightens the sky on the fourth day, the boy waits for something to happen in the stillness of the dawn, breath caught in his throat. The sun creeps over the horizon, birdsong begins to echo back and forth between the trees, and nothing changes. _Trust me_ echoes over and over in his mind, but the truth is harsh in the grey light of morning. 

The boy has repaid the wolf’s kindness in death. 

A low, mournful cry breaks free of his chest and the boy finds the tears he had set aside the first morning. Finally he gives into the urge that has plagued him from the beginning and throws himself against what remains of the wolf, weeping bitterly into its dark fur.

He is so distraught that he does not notice the warmth of it pressed against him, nor the solidness that holds his weight. He notices nothing, that is, until a warm hand slides over his shoulder, and a familiar voice growls into his ear. “Cease, Harry, shed no more tears over me.’

The boy starts and jerks himself back in surprise and joy at the familiar timbre of the voice, his eyes going wide at the sight that greets him. A man, naked where his limbs emerge from the swath of black fur pinned beneath the boy, blinking up at him with familiar dark eyes. “You!” 

Severus Snape, newly returned from the dead, winces a bit at the accusation and struggles to sit up beneath the boy’s weight. “Me,” he agrees soberly, and waits for the boy’s reaction, waits for the boy’s anger, knowing he deserves it.

The boy stares at the dishevelled wizard still caught in the loose cage of his arms. “You died,” he says stupidly.

Snape shakes his head, clears his throat with another wince. “No. Magic-- _Your_ magic,” he pauses and the boy leans closer, desperate for him to continue. “Your _guilt_, though I wouldn’t have imagined it,” he continues at last, the words a disbelieving mutter. “It transformed me.”

“Transformed you,” the boy echoes, mind spinning in confusion, his gaze traveling desperately over the crooked line of Snape’s nose, the wide curl of his mouth as he speaks. Warmth floods him as those lips curl back in the echo of a sneer, revealing familiar crooked yellow teeth. _Snape. Same old Snape_, his mind witters uselessly. Helplessly, he inches closer.

“You _died_,” the boy whispers again, trying to make his mind accept what his eyes are seeing. “You died in m-my arms. I didn’t...I didn’t _know_ until I looked at your memories. How could I have possibly--”

“You weren’t _meant_ to know,” Snape snarls and the boy can see the wolf echoing through him. “I don’t want your pity.”

“Pity? I envy your strength, your courage.” He reaches out with a shaking hand to gently touch the slope of Snape’s jaw, fingertips tracing down to the ragged scar at his throat, trying to prove to himself that this isn’t a hallucination. “_But you died_,” he says again, bewildered still by the proof under his touch. _Alive_.

“Hogwarts, the forest, the lake. There is powerful magic here, surely you have realized that by now?” The voice holds all the same annoyance the boy had learned to expect from his teacher, but behind it he can hear the wolf’s warmth, it’s fond exasperation at his apparent stupidity. “When you left me behind I was still alive, though only just. My blood was on your hands, boy.”

A gentle finger brushes over the boy’s knuckle and his hand twitches at the reminder, twisting to grasp Snape’s before it can retreat. He slides their palms together, gaze tearing itself away from Snape’s face to look down at their now tangling fingers. “The stain,” the boy says softly, comprehension finally beginning to dawn on him. “But Madam Pomfrey, the healers at St. Mungos, they all thought it was a curse.”

“The healers at St. Mungos aren’t worth the cloth their robes are made of,” Snape growls out, shades of the wolf’s grumbles escaping from his throat. “And Poppy is hardly an expert on dark magic.”

“Dark magic?” Unease curls in the boy’s stomach at the thought of using dark magic, however accidentally.

“_Old_ magic. Hardly anyone understands the old rituals anymore, so it’s easier to consider them dark. People get anxious about blood spilling, and for good reason,” Snape mutters sourly. “My blood was on your hands, your bloody Gryffindor guilt was eating you alive when you saw those memories and then,” here he sighs and shakes his head in disbelief, “and then you came into possession of all three Deathly Hallows. It’s a wonder you didn’t inadvertently raise the whole battlefield.”

The boy drags his gaze back to Snape’s face at that, thoughts spinning, and blinks in surprise at the lank strands of dark hair that have fallen forward. “Ravens’ feathers,” he mutters, suddenly understanding the days he’d spent scouring the forest, the days he’d spent carefully constructing a scarecrow’s body. His eyes drop again to the thick ropes of scarring around Snape’s throat and the boy thinks that if he had known, he would have constructed the simulacrum more carefully. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” The boy stills, struck by a sudden realization. “It’s been _seven years_, why didn’t you come and find me outside of the Forest?” 

“Surely you realized that a wolf’s mind and speech are different from a wizard’s,” Snape says slowly, black gaze wandering over the boy’s face. “Even if it were not, I found I could not leave the boundary of the trees.” Snape’s lips twist oddly and the boy’s breath catches as he realizes he’s seeing a smile. “It’s likely just as well. I was--angry, when I first woke up.”

“I didn’t know,” the boy says softly, regret clouding his expression. “I would have come.”

“I was still a bit angry, I suppose, when I felt you enter the forest. I would have noticed the werewolf trap, if I hadn’t been in such a hurry to find you.” 

The boy’s eyes widen in realization. “My magic didn’t fail, you broke the _immobulus_!” Snape has the decency to look chagrined. “And then you _bit_ me!”

“That hadn’t been in the plan,” he says with ill-grace, glancing away from the boy. “Nor the bond knocking us both on our arses.”

“Bond?” The boy whispers the word in shock. Bonds between wizards are serious things and the idea that he is magically joined to Snape, on top of all the other surprises the morning has held, leaves him feeling lightheaded.

“Psuedo-bond,” Snape hastens to clarify, color lighting in his cheeks. “You performed wild blood magic, it’s not a surprise that it would get a little tangled up over the years, particularly when you didn’t return to resolve the issue.”

The boy takes a moment to digest the information, thoughts slowly turning over in his mind. “My patronus recognized you,” he says softly, thinking back to that very first morning. “So many things make sense now.” He watches the color burn a little brighter in Snape’s cheeks.

“I would have explained, if I could. Even with the psuedo-bond it was difficult to convey certain things, certain ideas.” Snape pauses, hesitant. “And I’m not convinced that the spell would have worked, if you had known I would survive. The magic demanded sacrifice.” Here he looks away, shame flitting over his features. “I wouldn’t have asked it of you, if there had been any other choice.”

The boy shudders hard at the reminder of he has done, of what he was asked to do. “You were my friend.” His voice cracks. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I felt no pain, Potter, I assure you.” Snape says it firmly, squeezes the hand still caught against his own and then carefully begins to pull it away. “Though I understand, now that you know the truth, that you would not want--”

_I want_, the boy thinks. How many years has something been missing, some piece of him left empty with jagged, aching edges? He is weary now, tired of holding the weight of everyone’s expectations, tired of being the hero. How long has he been waiting for someone to rescue him, instead? How many years has it been since he was a child, alone and shivering in a dark, dusty cupboard? 

A sudden, clear premonition unfolds in his mind: He pulls away from Snape, reluctantly untangles their fingers. They trudge to the castle, dirty and tired and agonizingly separate. Snape--_Severus_ is led away to the infirmary and fawned over, welcomed as a hero by those who know him best and the boy… The boy quietly withdraws. He returns to his empty cottage and his empty life, Severus Snape as firmly out of his reach as if he were still dead. 

Panic crowds his throat and the boy does the only thing he can do, the only thing that makes sense. He tightens his grip on the hand tucked against his and reaches out with his free hand, yanking Snape even closer to him. Desperately, he crushes their mouths together.

The kiss...ah, the kiss. The kiss is a wild thing of need and fear, the copper tang of blood blooming from a lip that splits under its roughness. The boy sucks greedily at that lip for a moment and then carefully gentles the kiss, reminding himself that he doesn’t want to frighten Snape away. Pleasure thrills through him when his gentleness is rewarded with a slow parting of lips. He explores where Snape lets him, tastes and teases and learns, pulling away only when the need for deeper breath grows too great.

“Stay with me,” he whispers breathlessly against his wolf’s lips, a plea and a prayer. “I want you to stay.”

Snape takes a shuddering breath, looking delightfully bewildered. “This is madness, Mr. Potter. You are not thinking clearly.”

“Harry, please,” the boy says desperately. “And I’ve never thought more clearly. Didn’t I tell you? Without you…nothing has been real, _I_ haven’t been real. You _know_ me. You’re the only one who has bothered to look past _The Boy Who Lived_. Don’t leave, now that I’ve finally found you, _please._”

Snape closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You want me to stay because you think I hate you? What kind of--”

“No, _no,_” the boy interrupts, squirming closer to reach up and cup Snape’s cheeks. “I want you to stay because you’ve seen the worst of me, you understand the worst of me, and you love me anyway.” Color blooms beneath his hands and the boy smiles, tipping their foreheads gently together. “I want you to stay because I love you too.”

There are a hundred reasons why this is the height of foolishness and each one parades through Severus Snape’s mind in rapid succession. With the boy’s warmth pressed so close to him, he can’t focus on a single one. In the very depths of him, a wild thing growls its contentment. He thinks of a hundred cold mornings as a wolf, and the even colder mornings that had come before; thinks of the lonely, empty mornings that will stretch out endlessly in front of him if he leaves. He thinks of the warm nights spent with the boy, of soft whispered stories and laughter in the dark, the firm weight of him tucked near. 

“Harry,” he agrees finally, unable to push any other words past the dam of emotion in his throat.

Harry smiles and kisses him again.


End file.
